Tzora

Launched in 2012 by Berlin-based designer Anat Fritz, Tzora is named for a kibbutz, located about 20 kilometers from Jerusalem. Ancient, Biblical, and profoundly beautiful, Ms. Fritz summers there often and to her it is the most beautiful place in the world so she commissioned Berlin-based perfumer Geza Schoen, to create an olfactory expression of it.

Tzora opens with a note of crisp, bitter bergamot and tart, fruity black currant. The black currant has a pungent ammonia aspect, a characteristic “cat piss” smell that passes through the opening - a declaration that we are in nature. Aromatic clary sage gives it an herbal brightness while Peruvian pepper warms the opening up so that it smells of citrus trees, herbs and earth that have been warmed by the sun.

As it evolves, a floral heart of magnolia, osmanthus and jasmine blooms against the fading top notes. On me they are soft and perfectly balanced so that I can’t really experience them individually, but I can smell them, like they are being carried by a breeze. At the base, it gets woody and resinous from cedar, earthy, deep – but not heavy or dark - from vetiver and patchouli and gently bitter and piney from oakmoss.

The drydown is dry, clean and fresh and perfectly unisex. It feels lighthearted, as opposed to heavy and weighed down the way you might expect a fragrance about an ancient, holy place to smell like. And maybe that’s the point – a fragrance named for an ancient place that is not about that place, but about someone’s joy at being there. Don’t we all have a place like that?

So, while I have never been to Israel and I don’t know what it smells like, I know the place this EdP takes me to and I love the way this it takes me there.